Little Flowers
by painted.inkblot
Summary: Be like little flowers, lovely little flowers, Mum told them. Everyone likes a lovely flower. Oneshot.


**A/N: I just got this idea right out of the blue, what with how it seemed like the Evanses had some sort of flower name tradition for their girls. It's just a short, drabblish thing, nothing much.**

**Disclaimer: I am as far from JK Rowling as you can be.**

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**Little Flowers**

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_Be like flowers, girls, be like lovely flowers._

That was what Mum always told her and Lily. Be like flowers. Flowers were kind, petite, and pretty, just what the Evans girls had to be.

_That's why you have your names, girls. Everyone likes flowers._

Lily was a perfect flower. She was pretty, kind, sweet, and small. She was friendly and helpful and held interesting surprises in her; everyone adored her, just like everyone liked flowers. Even that nasty boy Severus Snape liked her, and he didn't even look like he'd like flowers.

_Flowers are gentle; be gentle, girls. Lilies are beautiful and so are petunias. Be like your namesakes, girls._

Just to remind Lily and Petunia of that, they each had a vase of their flowers in their room; Lily with some vibrant orange lilies, and petunia with some small pink petunias.

The Evans family loved flowers. Paintings and watercolors of flowers decorated the walls, and vases small and big held delicate bouquets all over the house, at least one for each room. The wallpaper's patterns were all small, delicately drawn types of flowers with green, curling leaves and small blossoms scattered around them on a pale, spring-like backdrop. Much of their clothes had a flower motif or had flower embroidery on the collar and sleeve. Even Lily's bedcovers had large, blooming lilies on them. The house's front and back had a lovely garden with many different types of flowers, cultivated by each member of the Evans family like the garden was a part of the family itself.

Gardenia Evans loved flowers. Thomas Evans loved flowers. Lily Evans loved flowers.

Petunia Evans hated flowers.

Her mum's voice always echoed in her ear, encouraging her to be like a flower, a lovely flower that pleases everyone. Like beautiful flowers waving gently in the breeze, kind and beckoning.

Lily was the perfect flower; Petunia was the flower failure. Her rather lanky frame, horsey face, and long neck didn't make her look much like a flower. Flowers didn't get jealous. Flowers didn't lash out with insults and mean sarcasm. Flowers didn't whine or stomp their feet or argue or sulk. Flowers weren't selfish and would refuse to help if asked to assist. Flowers weren't ugly.

Flowers were like Lily and Mum, and Petunia wasn't like Lily and Mum.

_Everyone will like it if you're shy and sweet like a flower, dear._

When Petunia was fourteen, she had repainted her petunia covered wallpaper with a pale purple. Lily had put a charm on it for Petunia so that if Mum or Dad looked at it, it would still look like the petunia wallpaper Petunia had possessed before. As Lily offered to do the charm and cover up her rebellion for her, Petunia thought of Mum's words:

_Flowers are selfless and helpful, girls. Everyone likes a helpful little flower._

Petunia had given Lily – the freak – a grudging thanks and didn't speak to her for a week after that.

As Petunia and Lily grew up, Petunia watched as Lily grew up as the perfect, lovely, little flower with bright emerald green eyes and flowing red hair just the color of a lily's, and how Mum gushed over her, her _magic_ and how she was _just like a lovely little flower._

Petunia watched in the mirrors how she grew up, with a tall frame and hazel eyes that didn't draw quite so much attention to themselves as bright green did, and muted blonde hair instead of red that had never heard of the word muted before. She watched as her slightly horsey face became horsier, and how the stranger's gaze would slide past her over to the pretty, red-haired, green-eyed young woman near her.

Petunia watched as she withered as a flower and Lily blossomed and bloomed.

That Awful James Potter called Lily Lilyflower with a crooning, flirtatious voice. Vernon Dursley called Petunia, Petunia in his usual gruff tone.

One day, on a lonesome walk the summer before Lily's last year at That Awful Magic School, after Lily had come home with all her new supplies and Mum and Dad began getting weepy over her starting her last year in just a month, Petunia spotted a couple bunches of petunias starting to blossom. A bit further down, Petunia spotted some thriving gardenias and lilies that looked like they'd just bloomed.

Petunia kicked them all and decided to go to Vernon's house instead.

_Don't use that angry expression or kick, dear. Flowers don't do that._

Right in front of Vernon's doorstep, Petunia had kicked a tuft of grass with a fierce expression on her face, squinted eyes, and reddened cheeks.

As soon as she went to university, Petunia abandoned her family's flower-loaded house and moved to a somber apartment in London, a dreary place forever protected by gray clouds and skies of sketchy, solemn gray. There were no flowers in sight, just buildings and sidewalks and people.

Petunia liked that.

Her first week living there, however, Mum, Lily, and Dad sent her a small vase with a bright little dandelion in it; they sent it with a little note telling her that it would surely brighten up her living space.

Brighten up her living space it did; so gray was its surroundings that its vivid color leaked into everything else, brightening it and giving the yellow sheen the dandelion already had itself.

Petunia threw it out the window after a couple hours, and watched it flutter to the pavement, weak, slender, and forlorn.

Then she kept the vase and gave it to a friend for Christmas.

_Flowers don't complain about things they don't take a fancy to, dears, always remember that. Flowers are polite and even if they don't like a gift, they keep it, just to show their friends how much they care. Be polite little flowers, girls._

Petunia remembered once that Lily wrote to her while she was at That Awful Magic School; Petunia had never told her she didn't want letters coming from such a freakish place like that. It had been delivered by a dusky red feathered owl which surely was carrying terrible diseases that would make her apartment all dirty. Petunia had sneered at it and its red feathers, red to match Lilyfreak's hair.

_Hey Petunia_, the letter had said, _is the dandelion still brightening up that lonely little apartment of yours?_

_Lovely little flowers don't lie, dears. They're nice and honest, but not in a brutally frank sort of way, of course. Be honest flowers and you'll be liked for it._

Petunia wrote back with one simple word: Yes.

When Petunia, rather unwillingly, visited her parents' house for Easter holidays, so that the family would be together, Petunia had not seen flowers in so long that the sight of the bright, cheerful garden that was still perfectly kept almost blinded her, each almost reciting in a hypnotic voice: _Be like a flower, a lovely little flower, be like a flower, a lovely little flower…_

And then Mum had come to greet her, a small daisy tucked in her hair by her ear, with blonde strands of hair cast across it, messy from slight breezes, and a cheerful sundress strewn with large yellow flowers patterned on it; Dad had come out, a flower tucked in his pocket; Lily had strode out, welcoming her heartily, with an orange lily practically calling for attention tucked right above her ear, and wearing the clothes of her freak world, but freak clothes _decorated with flowers._

Petunia had waved, wearing a modest dark blue sweater, a lighter blue blouse, and a pair of neat, straight, tan pants, and her hair unadorned.

The first thing Mum asked her, even before a hello, was, "Now, have you been behaving like a lovely little flower, Petunia?"

_Flowers are sweet and don't lie._

"Yes."

"Wonderful!" Dad had said, walking towards her and giving her a large, firm embrace. "Now come in the house, you should see the Easter decorations we've put up!"

Petunia predicted the Easter eggs had flower patterns and the spring-like tablecloths and curtains had the usual flowers, but in a tone that said happily, "Spring is here!"

Petunia's predictions were not disappointed.

When Petunia had been pregnant, she and Vernon had immediately decided on a name if the baby was a boy: Dudley Robert Dursley, Robert for Vernon's father.

"But what if it's a girl?" Vernon had muttered once, after returning from the grocery store with bags of Petunia's current food fetishes.

Petunia didn't know quite how to respond to that.

_We always name our girls after flowers, because they will be taught to be like little flowers, just like what they were named after._

"I…I think Janet would be nice," she said faintly, as images of flowers waved in front of her mind.

Vernon agreed without a second thought: "Yes, that sounds good," he concurred; he was hoping for a little boy, one he could teach to grow up as manly and respected as him.

Flowers were the only thing Petunia could see, until she weakly decided inside her head that if they had a girl, her middle name would be Daisy.

The flowers stopped after that, much to Petunia's relief.

_Because really, girls, which do you think is a better name? Boring old Jane or sweet little Bluebell? _

After Petunia stopped living at the house of her childhood, she had promised to rid herself of being a little flower, or keeping flowers, or anything related to flowers.

Yet, years later, Petunia Dursley had the best kept garden in all of Little Whinging. There were begonias and daisies and pansies and roses and much more. Yet everyone said that her gardenias and her lilies were simply amazing. Every year they were vivid and colorful, and bloomed and blossomed and _lived_. Something about them, every passerby said, made them simply magnificent, simply beautiful and truly what a flower ought to be

But though no one may have ever noticed, she never planted any petunias, not one single one.

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**A/N: So there you have it. I'd really like to hear your opinions, because I've noticed not many of the review I get are specific, they just say the chapter was awesome, etc. If you like it, tell me **_**why**_** you like it.**

**Constructive criticism appreciated.**


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